This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Carol Little. Carol is a top public speaker and founder of the Little Training Company, a company devoted to helping people learn how to make a memorable first impression and take their public speaking to new levels. She works with professionals and entrepreneurs throughout the world helping them to craft their message and deliver it in the best way to their target audiences.
But, that is second to what I want to speak with Carol about today. You see, more recently, Carol lost everything to a natural disaster, and through ingenuity, determination, and hard work, she came back and has built and even better business and life for herself. There are so many entrepreneurs experiencing what Carol went through right now across the world, so I could not think of a better person to come and share how she came back from losing it all and what she learned along the way.
In 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit Houston. Carol’s entire neighborhood flooded. Carol has to leave everything to save herself. Harvey was the event that changed her life. There is life before Harvey and life after. She lost everything she owned.
In the aftermath, she was faced with questioning herself, asking, “It’s it not about who I am, but who I want to be.” And she had to make a choice. Everything had to be rebuilt.
She made strategic changes to her business and how she works, and who she serves. What started out as a tragedy ended in a victory because the lessons learned through her experience have prepared her to succeed and overcome anything.
Can you describe the decimation that took place with Harvey and in your life? It’s best to listen at the 5 min mark…
Talk about losing your business in the midst of this….
Was there a point where you hit a bottom in going through this? How did you get yourself back up and keep going?
At the 18 min mark, Carol takes us through the timeline and actions she took to put her life and business back together…
Now that you’ve gone through this and come back, what really matters and what are you during the pandemic to succeed?
What are you seeing out there right now that people need?
The skills of making a first impression and messaging is going to be very important coming out of lockdown. How can we do our best in these areas?
How does someone articulate in the best way possible who they are and what they want and stand out?
Best Quote: "It’s it not about who I am, but who I want to be. That is a question everyone must answer at some point.”
Carol's Misfit 3:
Don’t be a hoarder. Share your gifts, skills, talents, and ideas. Put them into the world. The more you hoard the less you have.
Don’t argue for your limitations. Stop giving all the reasons you cannot do something. Argue for what you can do something. Argue for your liberation.
Stop struggling and allow yourself to rise. Struggle is an energy that can keep you from getting what you want to achieve. It’s like quicksand.
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This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Mathew Nemer. Matt is the co-founder of GetLinus.IO, a fintech company that is changing the game when it comes to what banking is and getting great returns on your savings. Linus pays over 57 times that national average interest on clients’ accounts and is able to do so by taking advantage of blockchain technology and the decentralized, digital asset credit markets. Don’t worry if that went a little over your head, because Mathew explains it a lot better and simpler than me.
The important thing I want to discuss today is the future of banking and finance and how companies like Linus are at the forefront. And we are also going to discuss how Mathew was able to get a rag tag group of IBM’ers, former founders, and top software execs to join his crew and make Linus a reality.
Matt’s career was launched in 2008. He started with a wealth management firm/hedge fund and hustled to make a name for himself. With all the carnage happening in the markets, he knew that the firm probably wouldn’t keep him, so he went to grad school and finished tops in his class. He worked at Chicago Board of Trade during school in the grain pits.
He then worked at Morningstar in 2012 as analyst. He started his first startup in 2012. As he says, he didn’t know what he was doing. It didn’t pan out. He then moved to Nashville and took a job with Vanderbilt University. It was at this time, he started to learn about Blockchain and Bitcoin and started following it.
In 2016, he noticed that BTC Media was gaining steam and Bitcoin meetups were becoming more common. He started doing work on the side for people doing ICO’s to get his feet wet. He then worked for BTC Media as their CFO. He was recruited by some other companies in the space and pitched an idea to one of them and landed with a crypto wallet company. This is where he met his business partner, who worked at IBM in the blockchain area. They were working on ideas on the side and decided to build the idea of Linus on their own. They got funding and put the pieces of the team together.
At the 10:30 mark, Matt and I discuss our current money system to set a baseline for what he does at Linus. (It’s best to just listen)
How does Linus work?
Break it down for us all to understand…
How do you address that you are not FDIC protected, etc.?
At the 27 min mark, Matt talks about risk and the “efficient frontier.”
What else should we know about blockchain and the emerging digital ecosystems?
At the 34 min mark, Matt shares the example of JP Morgan getting into crypto and creating it’s own stable coin (digital dollars).
What have you learned so far in this venture about entrepreneurship?
“The best thing you can do in your life an career is put blinders on. Don’t waste energy worrying about things you cannot control.”
How were you able to get a team of top talent like you have pulled together for Linus?
What is your best advice for an entrepreneur starting today?
Best Quote: "The best thing you can do in your life an career is put blinders on. Don’t waste energy worrying about things you cannot control."
Matt's Misfit 3:
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This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Dylan Jacob. Dylan has a incredible story. He’s already built and sold multiple companies, has built his current company, Brumate, to over $50 million in sales in just a few short years with less than 10 employees and no outside capital, he’s been awarded Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Midwest, is a Forbes 30 under 30 recipient…and he’s only in his mid-20’s.
But, he didn’t start out with anything handed to him. In fact, quite the opposite and his path went through a lot of twists and turns, but one thing was constant – he was an entrepreneur from a young age. A Misfit Entrepreneur. And true to Misfit form, he’s used his inner Misfit to bootstrap companies and create whole new markets. I’m excited for our conversation today and know that your going to get some great takeaways from him.
@Dylan.Jacob on Instagram for updates and keeping up with Dylan’s story
Dylan grew up in a small town in Indiana. There wasn’t much to do. His childhood consisted of him looking for and finding things to do. He always wanted to be an inventor, so he would tinker and create things. He grew up poor and his parents split with he was in 4th grade. His mom was working for minimum wage. He had been home-schooled prior and thus 4th grade was his first year in traditional school. Of course, having next to nothing, he would see other kids with things he wanted to get.
So, he started doing everything he could to make money to buy things and not burden his mom. He did everything from yard work to odds and ends jobs for people. This made him realize that if could provide value, he could get paid for it.
In 7th and 8th grade, trying to fit in and gain acceptance led him to hanging with the wrong crowd. He was expelled twice. He was an entrepreneur, but not in the right way. He sold drugs (weed). It wrecked his life. He was expelled, when to juvenile detention for several months and was put on house arrest. His mom had to pay for everything and it hurt their family.
It was at this time that Dylan took a step back to reexamine his life and looked for legal ways to make money to pay back all the costs of his trouble. He took a nod from his grandfather who had come over from the middle east and started fixing things like TV’s and VCR’s, etc. and had a little shop. As Dylan went into High School, people were getting smart phones and would damage them or break screens. Instead of repairing them, Dylan would buy them cheap, fix them up, and sell them on Craig’s List. He would order the parts from overseas and resell them. This was his first taste of making real money.
This started Dylan’s career of finding unique opportunities in gaps in markets. Big gaps.
As sophomore year started competition in the form of repair shops started to come in and he was doing less business because people were getting their phone fixed. But Dylan found another gap – He got to know the others of the repair shops and where they were getting their repair parts. They were ordering from E-bay and Amazon and getting B and C grade parts, not OEM parts that were A-grade. Dylan made deals to supply better parts from the connections he had made and was using. He made the competitors his new clients.
By senior year, Dylan’s business was working with over 100 repair shops around the U.S. doing hundreds of thousands of dollars. The funny thing was he still held to this theory of wanting stability and a job in life and decided to go to college for engineering. As he says, he “didn’t quite believe in himself as an entrepreneur.” He had gone from being expelled to being top 10 in his class with a thriving business – but still thought he needed a job!
During Christmas break of his first year, a larger franchise ended up putting Dylan’s repair parts in the bulk of their stores and then shortly after gave him a buyout offer. He took the deal and took the semester off. Once he saw the money is his bank account, it was a reality check. There was something to entrepreneurship.
He decided to put school on hold and go full time as an entrepreneur. He bought a house to fix up and as he began to fix it up over the course of a year. He kept a journal and would jot down ideas they came up. One idea came to him while fixing the house. It came out of the need for a better selection of kitchen backsplash tile. There was hardly any selection and none of the options, he liked. So, he saw the need for more options, specifically glass backsplash. Vicci Design was launched in 2015 and provided the largest color selection and size of glass tile available. Over a year, he knocked on doors and local showrooms and started working with Wayfair and Overstock. It was profitable from day one. He was still doing side hustles and launching other businesses during this time.
He turned 21 in 2016 and started to love craft beer. And most of it came in 16 oz cans. He’d notice that always the last ¼ of his beer was warm. It drove him nuts, so he wrote in his journal, “Find a way to keep beer cold.” That was the beginning of Brumate.
He started looking at the stainless steel insulated drinkware market. In 2016, it was the fastest growing category in the housewares market. All the major players were focused on hydration drinkware. It was all about water bottles or coffee. Dylan decided to create the products for the “dehydration” market – making drinking alcohol a better experience. It was huge gap that no one else was doing and ignoring.
His first launch on the concept sold out in a couple weeks.
Dylan’s story has a lot of teachable moments…
It’s one thing to have an idea for a product, it’s another thing to create it. How do you source and get a product done?
What can you tell us about selling online once you have a product?
At the 43 min mark, Dylan discusses some unique ways he figures out what is in demand.
What was the tipping point? $50 million+ in 4 years – what was the inflection point?
Constant innovation and testing is critical to staying on the forefront of product creation and growing the market.
Best Quote: Your biggest opportunity is what your competition is failing at or not servicing with their products.
Dylan's Misfit 3:
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This week’s Misfit Entrepreneur is Mark Given. Mark is a philosopher, teacher and speaker and travels extensively helping companies, organizations, associations, educators, and individuals understand the science of building, maintaining and repairing TRUST.
He is the founder of the Trust Based Philosophy and the Trust Based Academy and best-selling author of 8 books about Trust.
He’s started and sold multiple companies and built a global brand and I’ve asked him on today to share his best wisdom on how to create, build, and grow trust as I think it is one of the most important currencies we have as entrepreneurs – and I also think it will be especially important as we get back to doing business as the global pandemic subsides.
www.MarkGiven.com
Mark has had transformations throughout his career. He graduated from college with a music performance degree, but always wanted to be in business for himself. After traveling for music for a while, he decided to get into business doing a short stint in insurance. He then opened a small retail video rental store in 1980. He started long before Blockbuster and others. He focused on opening stores in towns with 25,000 or less people. He grew it to over 47 location in a 24 year period. He had the vision to see the changes coming with streaming and movies moving to online and sold the business long before others got out or went out of business.
He did very well on the transaction and then started into the real estate industry. But, really loved working with people and helping them. He realized that he operated for much of his life and career on a specific concept of trust. He realized that no one was teaching any science behind why trust works and how to build, maintain, and repair it. Trust is the foundation, but it’s more than just a philosophy.
Define what trust is….
What are the 4 Facets of Trust?
At the 13 min mark, Mark gives examples of each?
How do entrepreneurs go about establishing trust and asking people to buy our products and services in the “new normal” coming out of quarantine?
How do you see the Trust Based Leader in all this?
Best advice in managing the stress of these times and ongoing?
7.5 Things to Thrive in the Next 3 Years?
Best Quote: “Trust is the foundation, but it’s more than just a philosophy.”
Mark's Misfit 3:
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